tom abeles (tabeles@tmn.com)
Fri, 11 Sep 1998 08:15:48 +0200 charset="iso-8859-1"
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From: "tom abeles" <tabeles@tmn.com> Subject: Re: [ifets] Comment Tom Abeles Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 08:15:48 +0200 charset="iso-8859-1"
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Chris Jones questions certain issues:
1) alternatives to certification by The Academy
first, let it be said that there are medallion insitutions whose
imprimature will always be "gold"- In the UK Oxbridge degree and in the
US the harvards, Yales and MIT's are examples
There are lesser tiered institutions also. But there are now competitors
which are actually for profit and even have their stock traded on Wall
Street- The University of Phoenix here in the US is a pradigmatic
example, though there are over a half dozen in the US and more growing.
Many of these are bricks and mortar and not virtual. They are bottom
line "Universities of Excellence" competing against the traditional
instituions. Thus they do offer degrees but are also quite diffeent in
their purpose and direction
Additionally, there are now appearing institutions which are acting as
"credit banks", OLA in British Columbia, Western Governor's and others
in the US. They do certify- some for very specific programs and others
on a more general portfolio including credit by experience. Yes, they
provide validation or certification but separate from the institution.
One should realize that university degrees will not disappear. But there
are equally credible alternatives emerging. And I should note, emerging.
The rate at which they will grow is uncerain. But remember that the
traditional institutions have a 500 year head start<grin>
Interestingly, many of the traditional academy are also developing
parallel programs. The correlation of what happened to the US auto
industry when confronted with the Japanese invasion is amazingly good.
2) Standards
Interestingly this is an unsettled and unsettling issue. One of the
issues, at least here in the US is that the universities set standards,
for example, in writing. This is measured by the amount of seat time
accumulated in certified courses. What happens is that when the
graduates are asked to apply these skills, they are often found wanting.
It is not so much that industry sets standards that aren't met. It is
that the academy has stated its standards and the standards aren't met
In Minnesota, the K-12 students now have what are called profiles of
learning and demonstrated competency requirements. This means that the
students have to be able to take their knowledge and demonstrate that
they can make the connection with in the world and not just demonstrate
the ability to master knowledge within the confines of the text books
There is a group of universities in the US that has been able to
demonstrate student mastery of typical class content in 60% of the time
normally alloted within a traditional semester.
In a continuing education program for a major multinational, the
employees have stated that they are not interested in he "credits" as
much as they want the materials and knowledge (these are post
baccalaureate students)
Thus, again, as with certification, we are seeing the edge of an
emerging trend which says that seat time is not a relevant measure and
that the metric which is becoming important is the ability to
demonstrate the mastery outside of an isolated standard testing
methodology whether it is in the hard sciences or the humanities.
thoughts?
tom abeles
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